Isolde Raftery

Online Editor

Year started with KUOW: 2013

Isolde Raftery became the online editor at KUOW in October 2013. Previously, she worked for NBCNews.com and the Columbian and Skagit Valley Herald newspapers here in Washington state. She has also written extensively for The New York Times, where she was a fellow on the Metro desk in 2010, The Chicago Tribune, Seattlepi.com and Seattle Business magazine.

Born in Ireland to an Irish dad and a French mom, Isolde grew up mostly in Seattle, where she attended James A. Garfield High School. She later graduated from Barnard College in New York City and received a master's degree in literary nonfiction from the University of Oregon.

At a vigil Sunday night, Seattleites shared their thoughts about the Orlando shooting that occurred earlier that morning. Ricquel Sears of Capitol Hill, who was at the park with her two children, said her heart dropped:

"My brother is homosexual. It sucks that you would kill someone just because of that. Not only one or two people, but you tried to kill over 100 people.

Listen

Listening...

/

3:57

Jim Gates reports for the vigil at Cal Anderson Park on Capitol Hill Sunday in honor of the victims of the Orlando shooting.

Caucuses tend to be an awkward affair in oh-so-polite Washington state, where ours is scheduled for March 26.

So we need your help. Did another Caucus-goer sway you? If so, what did they say? Or did YOU throw down a sizzling argument that made someone else see the light? Did you bake treats? What did you bake?

Please fill out the form below. We'll be writing a story based on your responses (and recipes). Thank you!

Steeb was a nursing assistant at Overlake Hospital in Bellevue. She had returned from maternity leave and needed time to pump breast milk; when she didn’t get breaks, her breasts throbbed with pain. After a while, she said she developed an infection.

It was the Northwest’s most notorious kidnapping case. Little George Weyerhaeuser had been snatched off the streets of Tacoma and held for $200,000 ransom.

Eighty years later, Weyerhaeuser, the timber titan, told me he hadn’t read much news coverage about his kidnapping.

He has a vivid memory of those eight days, he said, but he hadn’t dug through those old stories from 1935. He was 9 at the time, after all, and his parents wanted to leave the kidnapping in the past. They wanted him to grow up without this traumatic event hanging over his life.